quarta-feira, 29 de fevereiro de 2012

Of Terror and Horror - Part 1

Hi! Ulisses da Motta Costa here again. During the preparations for the filming of Kassandra, I wrote this text for cast and crew about the horror genre. I decided to share it with you. The text has two parts:
________________________________________________________________




The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,
the first horror movie

In Portuguese, we usually do not differentiate the meaning of the terms "terror" and "horror". Roughly speaking, they are considered as synonyms. We use "terror" to define when a person has an uncontrollable behavior ("this guy is a terror"), and "horror" to say that a situation was catastrophic ("the accident was a horror"). But when applied to a narrative genre, whatever: they mean the same thing.

Not so in english speaker cultures. Terror and Horror have different meanings when applied to movies, books, comic books and so on. In narrative terms and without much theoretical checks, Terror is the feeling that precedes a frightening experience; Horror is the feeling one gets after such experience. That is, the first is connected to fear and the second is connected to shock.

H.P. Lovecraft
Terror is considered the most "noble" because it relies on a gradual development of anxiety and discomfort. There is a need to establish firmly the feeling of fear. On the other hand, when this construction reaches its climax and we witness the dread promised along the narrative, we feel shocked. So, a good scary story, we can tell, invests on the Terror during its course and leave the Horror to the viewer how when the story ends.

Why Terror and Horror works as a narrative, for more disgusting that sounds? According to HP Lovecraft, american writer noted for his short scary stories, "man’s oldest and strongest emotion is fear, and the oldest and strongest fear is the fear of the unknown". When one enjoys a story that creates fear, one notes this feeling. And the "role" of the arts is to remember that we have certain feelings - that is, that we are truly alive.

Blackbeard 

by Gustave Doré
No wonder that the scary elements permeate our culture: the mythologies of ancient civilizations are full of nasty creatures and situations; fairy tales are bloody and cruel. In the Odyssey, fear is the feeling that prevails in the cave of the Cyclops. In Macbeth, the terror of the Three Witches is established already in the prologue. That’s why perhaps that Orson Welles, in his version of the play, gave the movie a gothic clothing more likened to a horror movie than to an epic.

Thus, Terror and Horror have an ancestral origin, although it’s specificity as a genre. For all intents and purposes, they are both tragedies that go deep into the dark side of anti-heroes. Within the field tragic, we can say that there are three themes dear to Terror, which we will call here: Beauty against the Beast, The Monster in Us All and The Man vs. Evil. A bit about them:

sexta-feira, 24 de fevereiro de 2012

Making of Kassandra - 6 - Mystery



In this new video, the cast debates the screenplay, specially the story's mysteries. Luis Franke creates some theories about them (as we can see in the picture above).

Check it out (video in portuguese)!


domingo, 19 de fevereiro de 2012

Alfredo Barros, the editing man

Alfredo Barros is amongst the main names in Kassandra’s cast and crew. He’s an editor and one of the successfull cinema professionals that accepted the invitation for this project, just like Pablo Chasseraux, Luis Franke and Leandro Lefa.

Barros is the kind of person that doesn’t have a “curriculum”. He has a filmography. He was assistent editor in movies such as The Man who Copied (2003). Today, he got plenty of work as main editor and some of them end up in awards. In the last Gramado Film Festival, he won for best editing in short film with Três Vezes por Semana (“Three Times at Week, in english). In Kassandra, Alfredo’s job is to put together more than 120 camera shots.

According director Ulisses da Motta Costa, Alfredo got into the project when he knew it was going to be a psychological horror. “He asked me: ‘is this a horror movie?’ and I said yes”,  tells Ulisses. “Then he replied: ‘man, that’s cool, I’ve always wanted to edit a horror movie”.

The editing process is already began.

sexta-feira, 17 de fevereiro de 2012

The movie inside the movie

A simple detail on Kassandra’s script ended up creating a whole new monster, with the biggest proportions possible. It was right there, in Roger Monteiro’s script, in the scene 7: the neighbor, played by Leandro Lefa, is in front of the TC watching a “porn movie of questionable taste”.

We could have simply hided the TV or used any erotic vídeo. But director Ulisses da Motta Costa decided to shoot some erotic scenes – but no hardcore, changing a bit the original concept, without sex.

“I took as reference the ‘Pornochanchada’, a popular Brazilian genre from late 70’s, early 80’s, that used to mix comedy, some action and plenty of nudity and, sometimes, even real sex”, explains Ulisses. “And anyways, we couldn’t make someone go through any
embarrassment, but we could make it all funny. That’s why I invited a longtime friend, Elena Meneghetti, who, when we were in college, made a class work dressed as a dominatrix. She’s really humorous, perfect for what we needed.”

A frame from the original material
The scenes that will be used on Kassandra were shooted in a couple hours on Elena’s house. Maico Silveira made a small part as the man who is seduced by Elena. The crew and cast had such fun in the shooting that when the producer Ramona Barcellos called to know if everything was ok, all she heard was laughter.

The crew was improvised: besides Ulisses directing, the producer Roberto Coutinho made the cinematographt, the publicist Daniel Coutinho was the set producer, the composer Chico Pereira edited the video. The only one on her function was the costume designer Giulia De Cesero, who also made art direction.

In no time, what was to be a small scene turned into a “bigger project”: a fake trailer of a Pornochanchada set in Porto Alegre (usually, those genre was made in Rio de Janeiro or in São Paulo). Not just that: even artistic
pseudonyms are being thought to make the 70s vibe even more alive. Not counting, obviously, more characters and scenes.

“I got why people used to make Pornochanchadas at that time: it’s so much fun, even thou the movies were awful”, says Roberto Coutinho. “It´s a challenge to make something purposely poorly made”, Ulisses states. “That’s why the improvised crew was essential for the bad visual results.” Chico Pereira, responsible for editing the little “treasure” got the difficulty. “I was editing right the scenes when I thought: no, I have to unlearn everything I know”, tells him.

New scenes will be made on the breaks of Kassandra’s shooting. Wait for it!

quinta-feira, 16 de fevereiro de 2012

About the cast: Leandro Lefa


He’s the last one on the presentations. Doesn’t mean he’s less important: Leando Lefa plays one of the main characters in Kassandra, a weird and nameless neighbor which represents a threat to the leading character. However, the actor was the last one to be confirmed in the movie.

According to director Ulisses Costa, the difficulty was to find someone different from the other men in the cast. “Roger Monteiro, the writer, imagined someone older and possibly ‘bigger’”, he remembers. “But I was really afraid that the character was confused with the Big Man”.

Ulisses chose Leando Lefa also because their long friendship. He was one of the actors of  The Screamer (watch it with english subtitles), the director’s first short movie. The promise that they would work together again stood and more than one project was thought to continue the partnership, but none worked out. Another point well considered about Lefa was the fact that he already had done a horror movie – played a role in the almost legendary Beyond the Grave, a zombie movie shooted in Porto Alegre, never released commercially.

The construction of the character had to be really specific. Even with a tight schedule, Lefa was able to email pictures to the crew, showing some ideas of costume, make up, facial and body expression (pic). “Despite the lack of time to rehearse the way we did with Renata, for example, Lefa’s dedication was essential to make the character as ready as it was in the day of shooting”, tells the director.


“Ulisses’ merit: with intelligence and sensibility, he knows exactly how to say what he wants and then things just flow”, says the actor. “All I needed was the script, one coffee and three minutes of improvisation exercise where enough for me to feel completely safe and comfortable with my character and the whole crew, particularly with the rest of the cast.”

Coffee? Yep: on his first scenes, Lefa needed to look dirty. Art director Ana Gusson, suggested that a shirt was stained with coffee, to make the filthy look on the black and white photography. After that, the actor wore a wet shirt with a strong smell of coffee for several hours, what resulted in many jokes from Renata Stein.

About working in more than one horror movie, Leandro says: “I wanted to create a guy without deepness, driven by sex, who thinks is fun being grouse and repulsive. It’s interesting that in Beyond the Grave I also played a man intellectually limited and who didn’t know how to act like a person, but the characters are completely different”.

quarta-feira, 15 de fevereiro de 2012

About the cast: Luis Franke

 
Somewhen, during the footage of Kassandra, the following dialogue happened between actor Luis Franke and director Ulisses da Motta Costa:

Ulisses: You do know I’m a nonsense director, don’t you?
Luis: No. You have some sense. Some.

A few minutes later:

Ulisses: Luisão, do you know why I’m a nonsense director?
Luis: Why?
Ulisses: Because only a nonsense person would call an actor two times winner of the Açorianos Award to play a character that… doesn’t speak.

Luis Franke is the mysterious Big Man: a man with huge proportions, whose only purpose is a mystery to the main character, once he usually appears as a threat. “Kassandra is a walk through the real and the imagination, the lucidity and madness, the fight and the encounter with our real ‘me’”, defines the actor.

 
During the rehearsals, Luis was worried discussing the meaning of each character and their actions along the narrative. He wanted to know the role of the Big Man related to Kassandra: “I think my character represents the sleeping courage in her, which will be awake whenever she needs”, said.

Wanted by cinema, publicity, television and, of course, theater, Luisão won one Açoriano Award (a theater award in Brazil) for his work on the play O Sobrado – as a supporting actor – and another, for best actor, in an adaptation of Heinrich von Kleist’s The Broken Jug

He praises the whole cast and crew: “I have the biggest pleasure on being in the cast of Kassandra. The high level crew, coordinated by the great Ulisses Costa, who directed the process beautifully, allowed all the actors to connect with their characters and reach the deepest point of their minds. Acting with the young Renata Stein and my friends Maico Silveira and Leandro Lefa was, more than anything, an honor”.

terça-feira, 14 de fevereiro de 2012

About the cast: Suzana Witt




Renata Stein is not the only girl in Kassandra's cast. She's followed by Suzana Witt, who plays two different roles in the movie.

It's not mere coincidence that both the actresses study together, at the Dramatic Art Department in the Rio Grande do Sul Federal University. Suzana already worked a couple of times with director Ulisses da Motta Costa as assistent director. One of these works was a web series in wich Suzana called Renata for an audition. Eventually the web series was not released, but it was in the audition that Renata met Ulisses and most of the Kassandra's crew. By the way, she was aproved in the audition for one of the main characters. 

From assistent director, Suzana was promoted to actress. "In our earlier works, I was used to work behind the cameras", she says. "In Kassandra was different, but not that much. In the end, cast and crew are one". A curiosity: she and the costume designers Isabela Boessio and Giulia De Cesero were high school colleagues. To choose a costume for a prostitute (one of Suzana's roles) was a great fun for them.

Thou it is a quick appearance, the prostitute's scene was complicated. Suzana didn't have the time to rehearse with her partner, Leandro Lefa. Also, the dialogue indicated in the screenplay was vague: "a discussion with obscene terms". Both the actors and Ulisses conceived the scene just before it was made. 

In the first take, Suzana turned to Lefa and spoke out loud:

- Honey, this is way more expensive!

The crew had to hold the laughing until the "cut".

quarta-feira, 1 de fevereiro de 2012

Making of Kassandra - 5 - when a cell phone rings


We talked about Maico Silveira's participation recently, so let's check one of the rehearsals with him and leading actress Renata Stein. That's until someone's phone starts to ring.

And you know: never let yout cell phone ring when an actor ir performing (video in portuguese)...



Shooting in black and white



The black and white photography always was one of the main ideas on Kassandra’s creation. We always imagined the movie with no colors. The image had to be thought in dark and light. So, the decisions of the cinematography, art direction, costume design and make up had to be different than usual.

Kassandra’s director of photography is Pablo Chasseraux (pic), a most wanted professional who works in several projects in advertising, TV and cinema – check his cinematography reel here. He used a Canon 5D and shooted in color to apply the black and white on the post-production. However, the scenes were monitored with no colors, so one could see the contrast between the light and the dark and if the image wasn’t too grayish.

Once the main worry was the light and dark, Pablo simply started to ignore the color temperature, which means that some of the shots had warm and cold lights mixed. In color, looks like a mess, but in black and white it’s all simply wonderful. Worried about the crazy colors on the camera, Pablo asked more than once to the director Ulisses da Motta Costa:

- Are you sure that’s gonna be in black and white? There’s a purple light here.



The costume designers Isabela Boessio e Giulia De Cesero also had their issues to solve. One of the characters, for example, had to wear a dark shirt in a certain moment. They got a navy shirt, hoping that it was good enough. At the camera, however, the navy looked like a light and lovable grey. A quick switch for the Daniel Coutinho’s, the adman, black shirt and the problem was gone.

About the cast: Maico Silveira



We already talked about Renata Stein, the leading actress of Kassandra. Now, it’s time to talk about the other cast members. One of them is Maico Silveira, who plays the therapist that takes care of Kassandra.

Maico is a brazilian actor who’ve been in France and Spain. Despite his acting in several short and feature films, he usually prefers the stage. Or whatever can be turned into a stage: his monologue O dia em que aprendi a dizer não (The day I learnt how to say no, in english) requires nothing more than a small room to be performed.

Now you may be questioning yourself: how did a theater actor, used to the stage, got in this project? Maico is an old friend of director Ulisses da Motta Costa and of most of Kassandra’s crew (like composer Chico Pereira and producer Roberto Coutinho). The actor worked on their first short movie ever, O Gritador (The Screamer, in english - watch it with english subtitles), back in 2006. By then, Maico auditioned for three different characters and played them all good – which made the director say: “This guy has to be in the movie. I don’t know what he’ll play, but he IS in the movie”.

In Kassandra, Maico has a small participation. His presence, however, was essential to bring to debate the concepts of acting and to develop the work of preparation and rehearsals. Being a theater thinker, he used to discuss different ideas of acting with Ulisses, differing the stage acting and the work in front of the cameras.

 “At a certain point, we talked about Hitchcock, who said that was essential that, on suspense, the actor could play neutral eyes, so the director could build in the editing the meaning he wanted the character to have” , says Ulisses. “Maico, then, started to exercise this neutrality, playing really soft nuances of intention in some chosen moments. “This level of subtlety is pretty hard to reach”.

“At the rehearsals’ beginning I told Ulisses about some acting habits and asked him to don’t let me do those on the film”, the actor says. “I think he made a great work guiding us in a very subtle way to the whole meaning of the movie. No one had ever act in a suspense film and the suspense itself teach us a lot about acting in movies.”
Maico also appears on the “movie inside the movie” in Kassandra. But that’s another post.